epifaunan.

1914 C. G. J. Petersen in Rep. Danish Biol. Station 1913 XXI. 16 I would therefore propose, that..we can distinguish between an In-fauna, which is connected with the ordinary, level, uniform sea-bottom,..and various On-faunas (epifaunas), which occur in connection with such objects on the sea-bottom as stones, piles, shells, rocks or plants; the occurrence of such epifaunas is dependent on the distribution of these objects in the bottom.

1951 Arch. Néerlandaises de Zool. X. 38 Many members of the oyster's epifauna find their food on the shell itself.

1959 H. Barnes Oceanogr. & Marine Biol. I. 46 For the animals living on the surface or on other animals, the so-called epifauna, the material must be ‘scraped’ off the bottom and when the animals are relatively sparsely distributed a considerable amount of ground may have to be covered.

1964 Adv. Marine Biol. II. 172 Nearly every type of marine deposit..is inhabited by an assemblage of animals, some of which live on the surface (the so-called ‘epifauna’), while others (the ‘infauna’) burrow or lie buried beneath the surface.

1960 McGraw-Hill Encycl. Sci. & Technol. I. 340/2 Caprellids commonly occur on epifaunal growths in shallow water.

1969 Science 28 Mar. 1419/2 In the past most deep-sea collections were made with coarse-meshed trawls which collected predominately larger epifaunal organisms.